


Hazardous

by wewriteletters



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Memories, Missing Scene, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Self-Harm, not sure what else to add it's just a lot of Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21676738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wewriteletters/pseuds/wewriteletters
Summary: After lashing out at Eve during a night terror, Malcolm spirals down a dangerous trail of thoughts.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 83





	Hazardous

**Author's Note:**

> I was kinda hoping episode 10 would pick up right where episode 9 ended but alas...it's okay we still got to watch Jessica hurl a shoe at Malcolm's tv so #worth it.
> 
> Anyway, this is just about where I imaged Malcolm's thoughts would be after That Scene. I was also heavily inspired by the part in episode 10 where he has a panic attack in the station and flashbacks of his father mix with flashbacks of him and Eve. Because this dude just can't seem to catch a break. Self harm is the only trigger I can think of, but I do mention hospitalization in one paragraph. Take care of yourselves and I hope you enjoy!

His first instinct was to hide the kitchen knives.

The logical part of Malcolm’s brain realized how stupid that was. For one thing, he had a museum's worth of sharp objects much more dangerous than anything on his counter just a few yards away. And even if he didn’t, Malcolm doubted just putting away his knife block in the one cupboard above the fridge he couldn’t reach without a stool would do much to keep them from himself. Even dream Malcolm knew where he kept the step stool. But still, he needed to do something to show that he was still in control of himself, and this was what first came to mind. 

Ironically, the knife he had actually wielded was still out in plain sight, stuck into the previously immaculate, and expensive, wood floor of his loft. Malcolm carefully avoided it as he made his way around the kitchen. He didn’t want to touch the thing, especially not now. 

The...event had occurred just an hour earlier. At least, Malcolm thought it was an hour ago. He honestly wasn’t sure how long he had sat at the bar, eyes wide and fixed on the floor, the only word he was able to get out sounding so choked and desperate: “sorry.”

He never saw Eve leave but he heard her gather her clothes and rush out the door. Even after she left, Malcolm still stayed on the barstool, rocking back and forth to try and comfort himself. And he kept apologizing, a scratched record fated to replay the same verse over and over again. When he finally rose from his position, he moved robotically, his mind solely focused on getting the block of knives as far away as possible. Afterwards he found himself standing in the corner by the sink, hands on the counter top, leaning forward, back turned away from the scene of the crime, trying to process what had actually occurred. 

It wasn’t the first time Malcolm had lashed out violently in the midst of a night terror. The only difference was that this time he had a knife, and not just his open hands. A very deadly difference, the difference between Eve never calling him again and Eve being dead on his floor. 

These outbursts had been why Malcolm slept with restraints in the first place. He struggled with night terrors since his father's arrest, but every doctor his mother took him to told her it was a normal reaction to trauma and he’d grow out of it. But he never did. In fact, they just seemed to get worse with age. He would throw himself off his bed, slap himself so hard he woke up to scratch marks on his cheek, even sleep walk out of his bedroom. Sleeping pills kept him solidly knocked out but the price was when he finally woke up, he was so terrified from being trapped with his mind all night, he couldn’t find the courage to close his eyes for even a second for the rest of the day. 

The restraints had been an extreme step but a necessary one. His mother finally bought them after three years of screams, lamps being knocked over, and bruises appearing at random on Malcolm’s body. He had rejected them when she had brought up the idea before; the idea of being effectively handcuffed to his own bed terrified him. It reminded him of how his father was chained up during their visits. He didn’t want to be like that, he didn’t want to be considered a danger. 

But then he hit Jackie. Malcolm had been spending the weekend at the Arroyo’s after accompanying Gil on a stake out. The couple were used to his night terrors and knew how to best wake him up, so sleeping over was never an issue. But that night, a particularly bad vision accompanied Malcolm to bed. Ironically, he couldn’t even remember what it had been but at the time it was enough to make him sit straight up in bed and land a hard punch across Jackie’s face. Jessica, Gil and Jackie had all been at the receiving end of Malcolm’s wrath more than a few times, but he always seemed to reserve the worst violence for himself, only ever managing to get in a soft slap or a hair tug in before waking up in the arms of one of the much larger (and stronger) adults. But not that night.

It had been Jackie’s crying that actual woke him up. It wasn’t even that loud (he would later realize she must have been trying to hold it in) but it was enough to snap him almost immediately back to reality. She sounded so pained, Gil rushed over to the other side of the bed to hold his wife, momentarily forgetting Malcolm was even there. The suddenly very awake Malcolm was stuck looking to the two of them, his eyes were immediately drawn to the red spot already appearing on Jackie’s forehead. That night he called his mother sobbing, begging her to take him back home and just tie him down to his bed with rope. Two days later his bed was fitted with restraints, custom made for his small wrists.

The sound of Eve’s gasps that had been playing in his head were suddenly intertwined with Jackie’s cries. How stupid of him to think he could handle even one night of being free, one night without the weight of leather around his wrists. One night being of normal. 

What the hell was he supposed to do now? Going back to sleep wasn’t an option; Malcolm would honestly be shocked if he could get any shut eye over the next week. But being awake meant being forced to listen to all the horrible thoughts that had invaded his mind. 

‘A knife? Isn’t that a little on the nose? Like father like son…’

Malcolm slammed his shaking fist onto the counter top, the pain reverberating up his arm and giving him a momentary reprieve from the even more agonizing words in his head. It was all he could do to keep himself from hitting his head, grabbing at his hair, as if he could physically pull the thoughts out. 

He tried repeating the mantras Gabrielle had given to repeat him whenever he had a particularly bad nightmare. Telling himself that wasn’t actually him, that he could never-would never- hurt anyone. He had just been so scared, it had all seemed so vivid, so life like, so real. But he just couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Even if he didn’t intend to hurt someone, the fact that his capacity for violence, his disconnection from reality, lurked even closer to the surface than he already thought terrified him. Maybe he didn’t enjoy violence the way his father did, but he was beginning to question whether he was a safe person to be around. Now that he was hallucinating, the problem couldn’t be solved by simply shackling himself to his bed. What if he was in the break room with Dani and the girl suddenly appeared behind her? Would his first instinct now be to throw his coffee on her, smash her head in with his mug? 

The thought made him physically shudder and he stepped back from the counter so he could curl into himself more. He was still wearing only his underwear; the thought of grabbing his clothes from the living room floor or going to his bedroom to grab pajamas hadn’t even crossed his mind. It now made him feel deeply exposed, even though he was the only one in the apartment. Eve...no the girl in the box...no...both of them, still lingered in the room like a ghost. He smacked his right hand on the counter again, trying to keep himself from floating away with them. He needed to stay grounded, he had no idea what another hallucination would cause him to do.

Part of him wanted to hurt himself more. Hurt himself for less excusable reasons. He wanted to pull the knife out of the ground and cut away at his skin, like his father had done to his victims. He deserved it. He deserved to feel the pain they went through, the pain Eve must have felt when she saw him looming over her like a mad man. Malcolm had cut himself before, when he was fourteen; it gave him a feeling of control and also allowed him to punish himself, some twisted form of penance for Martin’s sins. It didn’t take long for Gil to notice the marks on his arms and the following ordeal had kept Malcolm from doing it again for the next fifteen years. His mother’s first reaction was to accuses him of punishing her, of just wanting attention, but her accusatory screams had quickly given way to sobs and she retreated to her room, sending Gil a silent order: “you deal with this.”

And Gil had. Malcolm begged him not to tell Jackie, he knew he couldn’t deal with the look of quiet disappointment she would give him. He apologized, promised to never do it again, cried into the older man's shoulder as Gil rubbed his back and told him it was all going to be okay. His mother eventually processed what was happening and between her, Gil, and Gabrielle, he managed to cope with those specific thoughts. It was a small victory compared to all the other problems Malcolm was still struggling with, but it had at least been something. 

He hadn’t even thought about doing it again in years. He had discovered more...discreet ways to feel a sense of atonement for his father's crimes; standing in front of the suspect with a loaded gun, shoving others out of harm's way, conveniently forgetting to call for backup. Malcolm didn’t know where his self sacrifice turned to self harm, but it was always a thin line. But now the thought of taking out the eighteenth century Spanish dagger Ainsley had gotten him for his birthday last year was almost too tempting. 

Sunshine’s chirps took him out of his macambe train of thought. The noise even brought a small smile to Malcolm’s face. She was all too familiar with her owner being up at all hours of night and liked to “ask” for a treat, usually getting one from a very sleep deprived Malcolm. The brief warmth he felt for his bird, however, quickly curled in on itself and turned into a ball in the pit of his stomach. The thought of being close to anything living right now terrified him and he shut his eyes tight against the image of him throwing Sunshine’s cage to the ground because his broken mind had looked at it and decided it was now the head of a bleeding corpse. 

Not being able to stand still anymore, Malcolm rushed over to his bed, trying to avoid glancing back towards the couch, at all the sharp weapons proudly displayed on his wall. His phone was on his bedside table and he picked it up before wrapping himself up in his blanket and moving to sit on the edge of the bed, facing the window. 

He needed to distract himself. Letting himself be alone with his thoughts was a dangerous game to play.

He could call someone. Should he call Eve? No, what kind of idea was that. He still wondered what she was doing right now. Had she gotten home safely? What if she ran outside only to have a panic attack on the sidewalk and was now just curled up alone in an alley? Did she go to the police, tell them her psycho date tried to slash her in his sleep?

Malcolm knew she wouldn’t do that. She knew he had been sleeping. But he had also seen the utter terror in her eyes. It was the same look he always imagined murder victims had in their final moments, when they knew they were seconds away from dying. One more image to haunt his nightmares. How fitting. 

It suddenly occured to Malcolm that Eve might tell his mother what had happened. And even if she didn’t, surely Jessica would notice how off she was the next time the two meet up. If Eve just stopped contacting her all together, Jessica would be even more suspicious. She knew the two of them went on a date together, it wouldn’t take her long to figure it out. If she didn’t notice any signs of discomfort Eve showed, she would see them in Malcolm; his mother had always been able to read him like a book and was frustratingly good at deducing why her son was upset. Malcolm could only pray she would just assume one of his quirks, as she kindly called them, had made Eve reconsider. One of his other “quirks.” A quirk that didn’t involve him unknowingly recreating a scene from a slasher film. 

Malcolm couldn’t even imagine how his mother would react if she ever found out what had occurred tonight. Her first thought would probably be just to scold him for being so stupid as to let himself sleep without restraints before the weight of what happened actually set in. He wondered if she would force him to check into a hospital. She had tried to persuade him to go on his own accord on more than one occasion. With their wealth and status, it would be more of a “retreat” than involuntary commitment to a mental ward, complete with painting by some upstate New York lake, sitting next to actual celebrities in group therapy, and a lot of xanax. But even then, there was a reason Malcolm had never checked himself into a hospital, even during particularly bad episodes. Like the restraints had felt too much like handcuffs, the idea of being forced to stay somewhere similar, even if only in purpose, to the place where his father was locked in for the rest of his life was too terrifying for him to stomach. Malcolm needed to feel that he was in control of himself. But now that that was slipping away from him in literally every other facet of his life, he wondered if he should. Maybe it would be safer for everyone if Malcolm Bright was locked away. 

He would have to bring up the idea when he saw Gabrielle. Or if he saw Gabrielle. He honestly didn’t know where to put her in all this. It was her encouragement to try being “normal” that lead him to this place, but he knew he couldn’t put the blame for this on her, even if the thought of easing just a bit of his own guilt through it was tempting. He could always call her; she had given him her personal number for emergencies long ago and he knew she kept her ringer on at night, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that either. Malcolm was not in the mood for therapy, he was already psycho analysing himself plenty.

The only other person he could think of was Gil. He was not in the stage of friendship with Dani, much less JT, where he could drop this kind of thing on them. And honestly, if he did, he wouldn’t be shocked if the two of them never wanted to be around him again. God only knew what his sister would say. In another time he would have dialed her number immediately; she had always been the person he knew he could go to, even when he felt like he couldn’t say anything to his mother or Gil. But after he saw the ease in which she revealed the most intimate details of his life in front of their dad, her boyfriend, and a rolling camera, he had begun thinking twice about what he told her in confidence.

His fingers, acting on their own accord, had unlocked his phone and his thumb hovered over Gil’s name in his recent calls log. He would want to come over and Malcolm did not want that. He could hide his distress on the phone but if Gil saw him in this state he would know there was more to the story than Malcolm simply having a bad nightmare alone in his bed. And he didn’t know how he would manage it if Gil tried to hug him or provide comfort physically; the thought of even touching someone was still too horrifying. He knew it wasn’t fully logical, that his hallucinations had thus far never manifested in violence and he had protocols in place to avoid it with the night terrors. But the weight of the knife was still heavy in his hand and he felt as if it had been coated in a poison that was now coursing through his veins, a poison that would kill anything he came in contact with. He slowly moved his thumb away from the “call” icon. 

Malcolm wondered what would have happened if Eve hadn’t been able to wake him up. If he killed someone while in the midst of a night terror, did it mean part of him still want to do it? What if his brain had just been manifesting a way for him to kill in what he would perceive to be self defense, softening the fact that deep down he had the same urges as his father? That deep down, they were the same?

His hands began to shake violently. The phone dropped to the ground, it’s case and the relative short distance keeping the screen from cracking, but the device still thudding on the floor. The noise seemed to vibrate across the loft, into the living room, where the knife was still planted. He still needed to get it out of there, his mother would kill him if she noticed even the slightest scratch on the wood. What would he do with it? What would he do with the half dozen other blades sitting above his fridge, with the priceless swords, knives, spears that hanging as deadly decorations on his walls? 

Malcolm knew he was on the verge of a breakdown. He was smart, he knew psychology well and he was even occasionally self aware. But it was like a car crash in slow motion; all he could do was stand by and watch, trying in vain to shield himself from the flying debris 

He would just have to make sure no one was around to be destroyed alongside him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
